X-Men #15 (December, 1965)

IT’S X-MEN: DOFP WEEK! HOORAY! Here’s a Sentinel memory!

image

What’s Inside:

The Sentinels have gone rogue, kidnapping their creator Bolivar Trask as to force him to aid in the destruction of all humankind. The X-Men track the Sentinels back to their lair, and Professor X uses his telepathic abilities to manipulate the Sentinels somehow, giving his students a fighting chance.

As the Sentinels examine Beast, we learn that, before attending Xavier’s School, Hank McCoy was a jock as well as a scholar. He had used his mutation to aid him in his athletic pursutes, something which now brings him guilt.

Writer: Stan Lee

Artist: Jack Kirby

Publisher: Marvel

Why I Kept This Issue:

OMG it’s the first appearance of the Sentinels! Okay, it’s not, it’s their second appearance, but it IS the first appearance of Master Mold! I don’t care too darn much for early X-Men, since the original Five sort of bore me compared to what was to come in the ‘70s, but I do love me some Sentinels. The Sentinels are the cockroaches of the X-Men world; no matter how many you kill, they continue to infest, and if you see one, youk know there are about a thousand you aren’t seeing. The Sentinel threat has always lingered and continues to pop up in the past nigh-50 years of X-Men comics, beginning with this issue. Okay, the issue before, whatever.

Attached Memory:

I was reading this comic on a sunny day outside of our trailer when I lived in a trailer park with my mother and her then boyfriend. He had just mowed what little lawn we had, and I just finished doing my job which was raking the cut grass and sweeping it off where it blown upon the little porch.

However, I didn’t do it “100%” so I had to rake again. I wasn’t sure what he meant, since I couldn’t see any more cut grass leftovers anywhere. It looked perfectly clean to me. But I did it again.

He then said that wasn’t good enough either, and wanted me to start picking up tiny little cut blades of grass by hand. I told him I didn’t understand because I had raked all the loose grass that I could. He then reported to my mother that I was “talking back” and so I was grounded for a week…for not understanding how to pick up loose grass that wasn’t there. I remember wishing that I had had mutant powers then to teach him not to push me around. Unfortunately, I was just a skinny, wimpy kid and the man hated me.

That was one of the earlier events I knew that this man, who would become my mother’s future husband, was going to be trouble.

Condition of My Copy: Pretty rough for being as old as it is, but not bad. No grass stains on it at least!